The blog of a chug-a-long angler enjoying his life at the water side…

Session 14 – Canal Quiver-tipping….

Tuesday, March 15th, and I decided on a day of quiver tipping on the Staffs-Worcs canal on a club stretch that I’d not previously visited.

Thanks to Google Earth I found the location and parking easy enough and after a short walk I was down on the canal bank, tackled up and casting in at 0815.

I chose to use my purpose built 8’6” Qualtack quiver tip rod from the 70/80’s, a cracking rod with a great action and great fun to play even 1lb fish on. Made by the East Anglian Rod Company, ‘Qualtack’ being one of their brand names. Along with my 13’ Hardy Matchmaker ‘clone’ (made by a moonlighting Hardy employee using the exact Fibretube blank, rings and fittings that Hardy themselves used, so really a Hardy without the ‘badge’) it’s one rod I wouldn’t part with for love, money or all the tea in China… some things are just SO perfect!

Anyway, back to the canal and fishing. Line was 4lb BS Diawa Hyper Sensor more or less straight through to a size 12 hook – I do use a small clip for attaching my 6” hooklengths as its easy then to change hook size via pre-tied hooklengths but the hooklengths are tied to 4lb BS line too. The ledger weight was a 6g cube type attached via a free-running run-ring and stopped about 18” from the hook.

So before fishing I introduced about 150g of dry feed with added maggots, hemp, sweetcorn and small pieces of meat – split into 4 balls and fed across to the overhanging vegetation on the far bank – 2 balls 30 degrees above my position and 2 balls 30 degrees below… and throughout the session I catapulted out, at probably 5-10 minute intervals, about 10-12 maggots into each of those two areas plus a few in the ‘boat channel’.

For bait I used a small worm plus 2 maggot cocktail – no other baits were even tried on the grounds that if worm and maggot won’t do the trick, or at least get some attention, then nothing will….

Anyway, from the last paragraph its easy to deduce my success for the day…. ZILCH!

Not even a tremble from an interested gudgeon was apparent – and I fished both baited areas, the area in between and various points along the boat channel, and tried tweaking the bait at intervals, etc, etc. – the only place I didn’t try was the near bank….

Oh well, always Friday, I suppose! 🙂

Where depends on if Liz is coming with me and where she wants to go if so – otherwise I’ve a couple of ideas myself. And I’ve made up a new bait (‘made up’ as per ‘mixed ingredients’, the ‘recipe’ is actually a John Wilson one from his book ‘Baits and Artificial Lures’)….